Category: Monday

If a democrat, the fellow running for Lagos governor on LP ticket should act like one – in his tongue, in acts and genealogy. That is accounting.

As the campaign runs its final course, he should tell us if his tongue is twisted. Let us know if he cannot speak the language, or if his accent casts doubt on his authenticity. Or is he afraid to utter the Yoruba Language? I have seen some of his Yoruba clips. In these days of deepfake, he may deny it. But let us have an authentic utterance from Gbadebo.

He should tell us why he waltzed into a setting and basked into a zest of sing-song in non-Yoruba language. Yet he has failed so far to showcase any campaign event where they wafted the language of Kaaro ojire. If he does that now, though, it will fall flat as an anticlimax of afterthought. He never did the right thing at the right time when the rites of campaigns offered him the site. So, he will not have a chance to prove himself right.

I will be upending his right to identify him by his name if I call him Chinedu for the reason that he does not address himself in public by that name. That name, though genuine, must be a valued identity of his. But he elects to go by the name of Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, and that is his own name by choice and birth. Is Chinedu a name by stealth, too? He used it in 2019. Why has he edited it now? Is it because he ran in a part of town where Chinedu inspired a war chant for his candidacy? Is it that he now is not proud of his mother’s heritage, or that he is too proud of it to smear it? Or is he being a Yoruba from the backdoor?

A fiery tone crests the internet. How much of this is true? We have not seen any spirited rebuttal? Is it that his silence is consent or defiance, or even a puffy, sullen and voiceless insolence?

Has he, in fact, privileged Chinedu over Gbadebo? Is he at one with the fact that Yoruba and Igbo are not at one over him in Lagos? Why does he not defuse the tension, and tell those who want to hoist anger against the host tribe that he comes in peace? Or is he one of those who believe that Lagos is no man’s land? Is he now at war with the people who share his first name? is Chinedu at war with Gbadebo? How is he allotting the armoury and army divisions over the division of the name? And is he partial to those who share his quiet or unobtrusive name? is Chinedu his stealth bomber? I should want Gbadebo and Chinedu to exchange roses, not thistles. Unless he concedes that he is under both powers. Is Gbadebo looking at Chinedu as a traitor, and vice versa? If true, why impose his inner storm on others?

I saw the video of him walking into an event, and the song was not in proper English or pidgin English or Yoruba or Hausa, but in Igbo. Nothing wrong with that. Any candidate can do that. But he has to balance it with another flavour to reflect our ethnic diversity. I have not seen him in an exclusively Yoruba rally, or a foray into the hefty Hausa-Fulani parts of the town.

He should have a conversation in Yoruba and make it plain that he speaks the language as fluently as anyone. If it is true that you cannot speak it so fluently, you can confess to that shortcoming and give a human explanation that it is not your fault. You can show us that it is because your mother did not teach you and she made it impossible by your upbringing. That can explain why you are so handicapped. They may however wonder how you would relate to the folks at Mushin or Epe or Ikorodu?

If that is the case, then make the point that it is not important to know the language in order to govern, and that your English and Igbo are good enough for governance. The people will then ask  why you hid that inability until the issue bubbled into a frenzy.

It would become hard, if not impossible though, for you to say you are competing with a person, like Babajide Sanwo-Olu (The BOS of Lagos), or even Jandor whose Lagos bona fides cannot be contested.

The next step would have been for you to counsel the people of your mother’s heritage that this is not a campaign against your father’s heritage. You are yet to act like the governor who has called for calm and eschewed the rhetoric and fury around Lagos about one tribe seeking to unseat the other. You should have told the Chinedu of your soul that such stuff is not of a civilized lot. But Rhodes-Vivour has done no such thing.

Rather, he has encouraged a malignancy in the form of a whispering campaign. But that was at the beginning. It no longer whispers but brawls on the street. It deafens with a register of words and phrases and even images that recall a time in history when this same city was overshadowed with the spectre of war and death. We cannot even forget, not long ago, when a royal caution about the Atlantic Ocean filled the city with portent and protests.

Rhodes-Vivour has acted like one who wants to stalk a city in silence, like a predator on the sly. No one can blame him for who he loves to marry, who delivered him at birth, or a riven parenthood. But he has to account whether he exploits either or both to rip a community apart. It’s not whether someone split his blood ancestry. It is whether it can spill blood.

His tweet about celebrating Biafra day also went viral. Did he do it? Few answers. He should confess and say whether he is an IPOB faithful. Or is it just another election slander? Some have said the LP’s presidential candidate picked him because of the same controversial credentials. Is that so? He has kept mum even when it concerns his mom.

The people will have to compare him with the governor who has stirred the state in peace, handled the COVID-19 matter with great aplomb and statecraft, is giving us a train, has given us the biggest rice mill in the region, apart from an array of housing, healthcare facilities and infrastructure displays. Above all, he has been a carapace of harmony in a nation ravaged with fear and bandits.

In his play of divided selves, The Tempest, Shakespeare asserts that, “the strongest oaths are straw to the fire in the blood.” Which of the oaths is in the bonfire? Chinedu or Gbadebo?

The first job of a candidate is to account for his past and present. The LP candidate has done neither. He wants to bend the present to worship his past.

Rebels of democracy

Can we ponder the paradox that the PDP and LP are calling Buhari, their favorite anti-democrat, to do a Machiavellian thing for them: annul the presidential polls? Now, they want to upturn democracy and are calling for the former soldier’s help. The same elements atop PDP and LP were spectators at best and collaborators during the topsy-turvy days of June 12. They morphed into partisans of Abacha’s party before the tyrant expired. Hence, they coalesced to form the PDP. Once annul, always annul.

The man who led and gave his treasure and limbs to restore June 12 and democracy was Bola Tinubu, now president-elect. This is not the only irony. When the certificates of return were handed out last week, they did not say it was rigged. But it was the same thumbs, polling units, flesh and blood, Nigerians, BVAS, the same time that they voted for Tinubu and the lawmakers. Flashing a grin, the LP man had a photo-op with Ireti Kingibe with her certificate. His over 60 percent showing in Abuja could not be phony. These rebels of democracy have not called for those annulments. One annulment is better than another? They know how to make their own rules and ruse. When it works for them, it is the rule. When they fail, it is a ruse.

Obama and southeast vote

Some commentators are justifying the Southeast bloc vote for the LP man. It should not merit  my  response if they did not call in Obama’s deluge of black votes. This is a misguided reading of history. The blacks supported him because of centuries-old legacy of slavery, and he was able to ignite a nation, whites especially, full of blood guilt. Nigeria has no such guilt with the east. Hence IPOB sentiment has not transcended the east. I cannot see how we can justify a bloc vote and call for national unity in the same breath when other regions, including where the LP man won outside the southeast like Nasarawa, reflected a diversity of enthusiasm. The LP man garnered votes there because of the conspiracy of the church, but his first impulse of support came from the IPOB group who switched loyalty once the LP candidacy took off. The logic that other Igbos have run and did not get such following is a poor way to justify bigotry. Rather, it unveiled the maelstrom of hate of the moment. In Obama’s time, it showed a nation coming to terms with it’s malevolence. Even at that, the whites reacted with the Rise of Trump and the alt-Right. There are always consequences for banding together.

If Obama reflected the American zeitgeist, the LP man jolted a religious movement with a dangerous portent. It mirrors a faith graying at the temple.

What Asiwaju Bola Tinubu – the president-elect – just pulled off is a miracle but the merchants of miracles in our midst are not shouting hallelujah. They are still querulous. Rather than see a divine halo in the man’s march to his hallowed dream, they were trying to choreograph the divine poise.

They did not see his seesaw of obstacles and how he scaled one after the other. And, also, how gifts fell on his lap. First, it was in his party, the APC. Once the 2019 polls were over, some elements in Aso Rock as well as opponents in the party ganged up. First step, sack Adams Oshiomhole as chairman. He was seen as Asiwaju Tinubu’s man in the party’s inner sanctum. They did, and then one of the coupists, Akpan Udo-Edehe, announced that they wanted a consensus candidate. In other words, a not-Tinubu as flagbearer for president. It was even decreed that no court suit should ensue. Udo-Edehe limped in his run for APC ticket in Akwa Ibom. He sulked into NNPP.

That was not enough for self-confidence.  All eyes focused on the primaries. First, they advanced the idea of an open one. Then they balked. Tinubu had a way with the crowds. The sweepstakes may creep out of their hands into the Jagaban’s web. After all, he was the chief proponent of open primaries. So, let’s make it delegate-driven. It buzzed until they saw again trap falls of disaster. The only feline path to tear him apart was to get the president to appoint a successor in the mould of how Abdullahi Adamu emerged as party chairman. It did not happen from Buhari’s end.

Then, they came with a magic. They wanted a narrow count that disenfranchised lawmakers and many party leaders. Their frustration was that a primary had to happen. Before that, they orchestrated a machine of lies. He did not go to Chicago.  A media outfit called Chicago State University to wrest a denial. Rather the school said he was not just a student but a distinguished one. They brought drug hobgoblin even after a U.S. government’s denial. They said he was not fit enough. He beat all contestants hopping from state to state. He even beat his chest over his peripatetic prowess when he met Niger State delegates. His opponents were waiting for him to faint and fly out in a medical craft. Nature failed their malice.

On primary day, some party men rallied behind Senate president as the anointed pick. But it floundered. In fact, some Villa elements wanted Buhari to change his mind at the last moment. One of them asked the service chiefs to see Buhari for a last-minute order. One of the chiefs insisted the president already gave them a go-ahead to conduct a fair primary. But a cabal insider insisted all three should see him. They did. They met an irritated boss who asked them to proceed to the stadium to conduct a fair poll.

He did not only win but handily, flummoxing all those who predicted his Nunc dimittis. He had before then enriched our political language with Emilokan. Some called it outburst. But it busted the cabal. As the campaign wore on, he became a source of immense derision. They mocked his body fluid, his height, his walk, his sitting, his standing, his words, his accent, his language, his faith, his paternity and maternity, his roots. But they were mocking his maker. And God said, God is mocked. If he had lost, a newspaper was waiting to appropriate O lule for him. But they wouldn’t employ it for their dazed candidate.

Weeks to the polls, they saw an inevitability, and they devised a new obstacle. Fuel and cash. They would blame his party for putting Nigerians through the crucible. Tinubu will pay for them. The elements in the villa were accused but they had no shame. They persisted. Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar loved the cynical play because they expected the scarcity to knock out the Jagaban. We experienced in Tinubu on this matter what political scientists call loyal opposition, when he spoke under warrior Lisabi’s shadow in Abeokuta about those who wanted him to fail. El Rufai elaborated later.

But in the divine strain must be seen a few factors. One, the APC northern governors, who were this essayist’s personal pick for persons of the year in 2022, insisted the next president must come from the south. Two, Obi came in as a gift by wiping out Atiku’s southern entitlements in Lagos, Southeast and south-south. Three, Wike and the G-5 factor. The forces were aligning. For the LP man even the APC did not hide the permutation that he was a gift for Tinubu. Yet, PDP and Labour Party in their mutual obstinacy united for Tinubu.  Kwankwaso, the Kano landlord, also left PDP. They broke into three. How could pieces make mincemeat of a whole? The APC left them alone according to the words of Napoleon: “Never interrupt your enemies when they are making a mistake.”

The Obidient movement was like Asahel in the scripture who, like Fela’s joro jaro joro, ran but looked neither left nor right with no weapon and plunged straight into a sword. It is a movement without eyes or ears but legs of a flailing antelope. Like flies following the sweet scent of death in a corpse, they buzzed into their own electoral oblivion.

Buoyed by false prophets and ethnic bigotry, it believed it could force a victory on a diverse nation. They forget that southwest and North coalition gave Buhari his victory. They didn’t have that heft. Christians and southeast alone is a narrow coalition. If the Atiku votes up north of Muslims with the southwest were in contention with the Obidients, a shellacking would have drowned Labour. Having shaved Atiku in the southeast and southsouth, Atiku relied only on the north for big numbers. Obi’s cynical move gave us no ideology. If it did, it romped in a narrow radius.

The United States has a religious and white coalition. But it falls short. They align with business with the concept of low taxes and small government. Nixon enunciated the Christian and cultural nexus into what he called the southern strategy. It is exhibited in the G’s: God, gays and guns.

The prophets hoodwinked their followers, acting like God’s spokesmen. I asked on TVC Breakfast Show, if that were the case, what happened with Father Hyacinth Alia of Benue State who supported APC and triumphed for Tinubu? Did it mean the holy spirit was at war with itself? God forbid. As Jeremiah wrote, they were speaking from their imaginations. He said, “A wonderful and terrible thing is committed in the land. The prophets prophesy falsely and the priests bear rule by their means. And my people love to have it so.”

Men like that are a disgrace to the word of God. They are spiritual hustlers who want to fill their halls and build gigantic buildings as though the truth of God relies on marble palaces made with hands. Just as we no longer rely on physical circumcision but the foreskin of the heart, the love of God is in the heart, not in the ululations of false prophets. Their entrance does not bring light, but lights-out. For all who prophesied, Paul said, “though there be prophecies, they shall fail.” And of course, their tongues shall cease.

The Bible says let the wheat and tares dwell together, not duel together. When the polls results started trickling in, the Obidients were exulting because they were cherry-picking areas where they were doing well. The polls were credible then. They forgot the big picture. They were happy to hear that Lagos fell, that a sort of partial domino fall was dawning: Buhari lost Katsina, Ayade lost in Cross River, Lalong in Plateau, Adamu in Nasarawa, El Rufai in Kaduna, et al. Translation: a credible proceeding. Twenty governors lost their states. But when Obidients lost the full count, they say no sir, it was rigged. Of course, it was no perfect poll. A man like hoary Obasanjo was sulking like an anarchist. The problem with the Obidients is that where they lost, they didn’t lose. Where they won, they didn’t win enough. Maybe they want to win 150 percent of southeastern states.

As for some of my eastern brethren, they thought it was all right that a Tinubu had zero percent in one state and one percent in two states there. They have to understand that democracy is about building bridges and not erecting bubbles of bluster.

It is the sort of puffy air they are bringing to Lagos. A territorial braggadocio does not make peace in another person’s patrimony. Many of them work here in peace, but a swagger of proprietary assertion by a good number of them does not make for peace.

The LP man was an interesting candidate. He was a man who did not rely on his track record or vision. His followers did not watch him except his old wristwatch. When he lied, it was an act of human grace. When Tinubu erred, it was a big, unforgivable gaffe. His statistical illusions made the LP candidate a wizard. All those who hated Tinubu channeled their anger for the LP man. He did not have to be a saint. They canonised him and gave him the holy scent, including our pastors who loved the holy spirit so much that they did not see what was coming.

Some writers and commentators went abroad to make claims for which they have no evidence. One of them was writer Chimamanda Adichie who wrote a New York Times piece out of rage rather than method. She turned anecdotes into a pattern, history into tendentious material, bigotry into grace. She probably thought she was writing a novel. But facts, even when fictionalized, have their place. She is often quick to toady up to the west for affirmation. She is entitled to her servitude, but she should not replace research with sentiment. As in her New York Times effusions. She needed to know that we had only a fraction of the polling stations with problems. And every polling station had result sheets signed by party agents at various levels. We need to ascertain whether some people are wailing because they did not have the chance to hack the server. Writing as though her Half of A Yellow Sun, she whipped up a spectre of refugees going to America. No bloodshed here, please.

The polls may not be perfect; hence the law speaks of substantial compliance, a point the Nigerian Bar Association President noted in his assessment. At long last, we shall accept that elections, like this one, tumble social hierarchies by affirming the royalty of the citizen. In the words of the boisterous American statesman Huey Long, “every man a king but no one wears a crown.” The coronation belongs to the Nigerian people.

When he said, emilokan, Tinubu turned out to be more prophetic than any prophet in the land. It was an act of faith as novelist Dostoyevsky wrote, “In a realist, faith does not spring from miracle but miracle out of faith.” Tinubu was the man of faith.

He is rich. He is powerful. He has influence. He has changed lives. He transformed a city. Made men and women. Yet he attracts quite a few adversaries. The scriptures say when Isaac roared into success, the Philistines envied him.

They deny him the right to be human. When he is sick, some wish him dead or eternally crippled. When he is not seen, some conjure his ghost as a dead soul. When he reappears, they won’t even credit him as a revenant, a man who came back from the dead. Rather, they wait for another date with the grave – in their imagination. Through the primaries, he gulped up mileage against his opponents’ little acreage. In the elections season, he bounded from huge crowd to huge crowd with breathtaking regularity. His opponents, including the “youth” among them, waited to take a breath and measure the breadth before the next flight.

When he makes a mistake, they raise the stakes of sin and he becomes Satan. When he does a saintly thing, they turn either blind or amnesiac.  When they are around him, they flatter and lick his boots. A minute after they leave his ken, they snarl and huff.

His traducers are like the characters in the proverb that says, “Haters don’t really hate you, they hate themselves because you are a reflection of what they want to be.”

Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu knows this. Hence, he has never had an enemy in politics. Rather he has rivals. He can joust, even if he may not always be just. He has had many, some over money charges, often on matters where he is just. Others over drug charges where they thrash about like a ram even though he was long ago declared sin-free by the number one nation in the world in the rule of law: The United States.

But he has never maligned nor spat malice. Hence, when some of his associates left, he often welcomed them back and elevated them, causing those who are at home to feel left behind. Before him, Jesus had dispensed the parable of the prodigal son who overtook the homeboy. Tinubu has never abandoned a prodigal. He understands the human conscience, the tendency to fall and faint, and he is ready to embrace and give an opportunity for rebirth. I have seen a few bow before him for pardon in private after shooting him with bows and arrows in the public square.

Few in politics have this gift. They know it is one of his staying privileges and virtues. They hate him and try to tell a story of original lies about this Nigerian original.

They won’t tell the story that he was the one who fought for this democracy when they were galivanting with soldiers in the military era, when June 12 fumed. They hid in shadows and fear. They say he is rich, so he must be a crook. Yet he fought in the trenches home and abroad, sacrificing his personal treasures for some of those who now tar him with lies. I saw an article in ThisDay on Sunday refer to an episode when Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka narrated how Tinubu begged the bard, because of his global credibility, to sign a paper for him to import Taiwan rice to fund the struggle. The gifted writer obliged. He knew the value of the fruits to dethrone the dark-goggled brute in Aso Rock, and the soldiers paid him back in ruthless kind chasing after him in western countries. They forget he was rich before he mounted the governor perch.

It will make sense for them to know his many firsts in the republic, some in Nigerian history. They forget that the idea of revolutionizing the electric power architecture, and challenging the monolithic hold of PHCN began under Tinubu when he rattled OBJ as president to free us from the stranglehold of ‘NEPA’ monopoly. It began with Enron, and it has set the dialogue in motion to challenge the constitution.

They forget he was the John the Baptist of financial engineering. Lagos could not pay its workers because of gnomes on the payroll. He combed out the lies in the accounts like lice in infected hair. He saved the purse. From less than a billion Naira in internally generated revenue, it was humming in the region of N9 billion a month. Today it is about N60 billion. Some say he merely unearthed what was there. I reply, when Jesus pointed the fish area of the river to his followers, was that not genius? Why are others not doing so. Some states earn in one year what Lagos swallows in a month.

When other  governors said they were sending their men to learn from the Lagos experiment in making money, they were giving a tribute to the genius that made it happen. They hate to go like mendicants to Abuja for bailouts. They want to be like Lagos. Yet, some of them curse their source of blessing.

His detractors balk at his wealth. They forget that he is often called Robin Hood, the man who takes from the rich and gives to the poor. It derives from his worldview not only as a liberal spender but his background among the poor in Lagos. Segun Ayobolu reminded us in his column of the same attacks on Awo over Maroko lands. The great Nigerian was called a thief. Awo said: “In Nigeria, if a poor man is fighting for the poor, they will claim he is only jealous of the rich and if a rich man is fighting for the poor, they will ask him to first of all go and commit economic suicide and join the poor before he can pursue their cause.” Is that why Jesus said the poor will always be with us?

This campaign has exposed the hypocrisy of many. When you accuse their candidates of their financial shenanigans, like the one who sold off our properties for nothing as vice president and the one who invested his state money in his family business, they say it is normal. All these with evidence. But when it comes to Tinubu, they say it is different even when they have no proof.

Some have asserted that financial engineering was Asiwaju’s capital legacy as governor. They may be right. The premise is that the flow of funds engendered the transformational projects in the state. Money is also the mother’s milk of development. But that is only one perspective. He has a background in finance, and as internal auditor in Mobil, he overhauled the purse of the oil mogul. For appreciation, they made him in charge of finances, and he became treasurer.

I would say his best gift is his imagination. The story of power is one. What of security? While the rest of the nation crawls in fear today, Lagos is a strong tower. Many run there and are safe. He signposted an answer with a security trust fund that secured an architecture for peace. That arrangement has only grown stronger from one successor to another and aped, if imperfectly, in Abuja. This is no great hour in the nation’s security. But Lagos remains a city on the hill.

Two other points. One, lekki. Jakande pave a road there. Tinubu launched a city – the estates, the free trade zone, the Lekki port and airport, the flyovers, the refinery, et al. As they say of Erasmus and Martin Luther, Jakande laid the egg, Tinubu preserved and hatched out a big bird, but it was not of the plumage Jakande envisioned. Two, Bar Beach. Soludo complained gullies have taken up 40 percent of Anambra like moths. Obi was there when it was going on. He claimed to have spent billions there in budgets. No vision, no action. Forget where the money went. In Lagos, Ikoyi and Victoria Island may have submerged when OBJ’s men were spending N4 billion – like 20 billion today – every year on sand to save water encroachment. It did not work. Tinubu came with a new idea: turn it into a city. Here we are. Eko Atlantic generates more money a month than some states.

Some say his great gift was the fight for federalist causes for which he used now vice president Yemi Osinbajo to head a team to fight a number of causes, including the allocation of revenues for all states in the nation. Lagos has followed that step, especially when a lawyer, now Trojan of works, Babatunde Raji

Fashola (SAN), succeeded him. The battle is still on the burner. The BOS of Lagos Babajide Sanwo-Olu and the uproarious Nyesom Wike took on the tax matter last year. We can see his legacy now on the naira crisis as states on their own are taking on Buhari for flouting the Supreme Order and making himself a dictator in a democracy. Forget the facile ululation of intellectual fraudsters like one Chidi Odinkalu and J.B. Daudu, who clutched at straws as salesmen to defend their principals, who are, like Nero, fiddling why Nigerians burn with hunger, and groan. Anyway, playwright Arthur Miller announced the death of salesmen long ago.

On social issues, he, a Muslim, gave public schools back to the missions. A visionary step that will continue to shield Lagos from the maelstrom of bigotry that obsesses other parts of the country. This essayist reminded the nation that Tinubu, a Muslim, unfurled the Christian tradition of new year service every January in Lagos. In an age when politicians fall into a straitjacket of zealotry, Tinubu is wearing a garment of peace. Those thumping bishops and pastors who now cavil at him once nodded to the same innovation before they stopped hearing the whisper of the holy ghost.

Others say his best quality is as a leader of leaders. He has given quite a few talents to the country, and I need no roll call here.

Tinubu’s biography distinguishes between a leader and a manager. Some managers are great, but they can only accomplish set goals. A leader of this sort is a visionary, who turns ideas into a soup of charisma to stamp a profound, if revolutionary change on a generation. That was the difference between Awo and Akintola, between Mandela and Mbeki, Between Churchill and Macmillan, between Washington and Adams, etc. After Charles De Gaulle left office, one of his cabinet ministers said the “story of De Gaulle is in his legend.”

Since he declared to run for president, Tinubu has been offering himself as a Lagos original. If no one can deny that Lagos is the best–run state in the nation by a mile, then, no one should look askance at an opportunity to rewrite Nigeria on a national scale. Tinubu arises today as David in Bible times arose to the low rung of the demographic of desire: “And everyone that was in distress, and everyone that was in debt, and everyone that was discontented, gathered unto him and he became a captain over them.” This is the closing argument.